from the microplastic-makin'-me-feel-spastic dept.
Microplastics permeate seafood across southern Australia:
Plastic rubbish is everywhere and now broken-down microplastics have been found in variable concentrations in blue mussels and water within the intertidal zone at some of southern Australia's most popular and more remote beaches.
Flinders University researchers warn that this means microplastics are now finding their way into human food supplies—including wild-caught and ocean-farmed fish and seafood sourced from the once pristine Southern Ocean and gulf waters of South Australia.
[...] Trillions of microplastic particles exist in the world's oceans, with the highest concentrations recently found in the shallow sea floor sediment off Naifaru in the Maldives (at 278 particles kg-1) and lowest reported in the surface waters of the Antarctic Southern Ocean (3.1 x 10-2 particles per m3).
For the first time, the new Flinders University study measured the presence of microplastics in South Australia's coastline, in areas important both for shipping, fishing and tourism, along with other industries and local communities.
[...] Plastic types include polyamide (PA), polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), acrylic resin, polyethyleneterephthalate (PET) and cellulose, which suggests both synthetic and semi-synthetic particles from single-use, short-life cycle products, fabrics, ropes and cordage from the fishing industry.
"The areas examined include some biodiversity hotspots of global significance—including the breeding ground of the Great Cuttlefish in the Northern Spencer Gulf and marine ecosystems more diverse than the Great Barrier Reef (such as Coffin Bay), so cleanup and prevention measures are long overdue," says Professor Burke da Silva.
Journal Reference:
Janet R. Klein, Julian Beaman, K. Paul Kirkbride et al., Microplastics in intertidal water of South Australia and the mussel Mytilus spp.; the contrasting effect of population on concentration, Science of The Total Environment, 831, 2022
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.154875
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @06:30PM (1 child)
Just eat seafood off Northern Australia
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @08:22PM
go North? Nope!
South East Asia is one huge dumping ground - that is HOW all this plastic lands up in the oceans in the first place!
April 2021 study by Meijer et al - leaders were Philippines (36.4%), India (12.9%), Malaysia (7.5%), China (7.2%), Indonesia (5.8%). The next one was Brazil with 3.9%, then back to S.E.Asia for Vietnam, Bangladesh and Thailand. The USA was 34th contributing 0.2%.
There are videos of dump trucks tipping into rivers and the ocean, many many pictures of coastlines coated deep in garbage - a lot of that being plastic. Then you get the one or two isolated "show piece" projects of a beach cleaned up...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @06:48PM (11 children)
Bacteria, fungi, and even insects and such, are consuming plastics even as we are reading yet another helping of FUD, and that fact has been quite well known for years and years.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5658625/ [nih.gov]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6132502/ [nih.gov]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6752018/ [nih.gov]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6859810/ [nih.gov]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7694613/ [nih.gov]
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34031794/ [nih.gov]
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0198446 [doi.org]
https://applbiolchem.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s13765-020-00511-3 [springeropen.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @07:31PM (5 children)
You really should read those.
They are proposals for candidates that might be used to break down plastics.
None of them suggest that plastics in the environment are fine and will take care of themselves, nor address the geometric increase in plastic waste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @08:41PM (4 children)
Seems your reading comprehension is subpar. Living bacteria aren't anyone's "proposals", they live, multiply, and eat, regardless of anyone writing about possible uses for them in articles.
When bacteria in a landfill do consume tens of percents of a plastic sample in a month or three, it IS environment taking care of itself. If you disagree, please support your opinion with something more substantial than handwaving. Also, do read up on what the words "geometric increase" mean, before abusing them ever again.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @09:46PM (3 children)
I grabbed one of your links at random, which was a review article, and it says
Another one just said "these are the things we see when some bacteria works on some plastic."
And this from another of the review articles you posted:
All I've seen from your links are "maybe this, maybe that" and "more research needed." That is all important stuff, but thus far the most productive approach is stopping it at the source, not thinking that it will somehow take care of itself at some point in the future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @10:42PM (2 children)
There's none so blind as those who will not see.
Your combing through the articles to find a few statements typical to real science in progress, and pounce on them while somehow "not noticing" the multitude of demonstrated facts all around them, is full marks for persistence but an F for honesty.
As to "the most productive approach", it is quite a bizarre definition of "productive" you are using, if you believe "productive" is about wasting huge sums of money, lots of time and effort, and doing a lot of damage to an already hamstrung economy, all in the name of "helping" nature do the thing it was doing for billions of years entirely without your intervention. If you believe our species are the first to make new polymers in all the history of life on planet Earth, you are so mistaken it is not even funny.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @11:24PM
All that self-important criticism and you end up looking like a jackass. Did you go by jmorris back in the day?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @11:31PM
When the "few statements" are pulled from the paper conclusions (let's pause and let you ponder what that word means), those random bits of words do carry weight into what the papers were trying to say, which is to say, apparently the opposite of what you were trying to say. Unless you are playing 4D chess with me and I am too dull to recognize that you are trolling me in the classic sense by appearing to be a very dense fellow and you are actually agreeing with me and seeing if I can notice it!
You clever bastard! I knew you couldn't really be that thick.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @08:01PM (3 children)
Marinobacter, Oceanospiralles, Pseudomonas, and Alkanivorax eat petroleum.
Other microbes breathe arsenic.
The former lasted for million of years.
The latter will kill you in an instant.
Basically, sustainability isn't easy as you think.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @08:45PM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_seep [wikipedia.org]
Why is it that every greenie we see here, is totally ignorant of all things biological? The pattern is far too persistent to be a mere coincidence.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday April 19 2022, @10:27PM
Maybe because biology is a lot more difficult than nuclear physics?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @11:19PM
Why are so many conservatives incapable of saying what they're mad about? Probably because they don't know themselves, they just get mad at any "liberal" topic and their brain thrashes around trying to find ratiinale.
The best I can figure from your post is you're mad about "lasted millions of years" implying they may have died. Was that what your link was for?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @11:58AM
What are you mad about? That there is plastic in fish?
Are you one of these weirdos that is still protesting that "COVID doesn't exist" or something? And yes, it existed and still there and plenty of people dying from it.
And the plastic is same shit. It's in the water. It's in the air. Even Chucky on Fox News is doing his opinion pieces about it but can't quite articulate it only "testosterone this" and "testosterone that". But to you, it's like a nothing? So if you throw away that plastic bag, it just disappears right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR4lFzj3EHE [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @07:27PM (1 child)
Maybe they'll do something about their six rivers that impart 98% of all ocean-bound plastics.
Oh, wait. Almost forgot. The West is really to blame.
Carry on.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @03:53AM
A sizable fraction of that plastic is shipped to Asia from North America and Europe by fake recycling companies, paid for by government subsidies. It is entirely consistent to be upset about their contribution while also demanding accountability at home.
(Score: 3, Touché) by looorg on Tuesday April 19 2022, @08:25PM (4 children)
Can't be/taste worse then Vegemite.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @09:03PM (3 children)
If that's true, then why did the Brazilian man SMILE when he gave me a Vegemite sandwich?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @09:48PM (2 children)
I thought he was from Brussels (and full of muscles)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @10:22PM (1 child)
You learn something new every day! Damned impenetrable Aussie accent. ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @02:09AM
Colin Hay, the lead singer, is from Scotland.
No wonder you couldn't understand his accent if you thought he was singing Aussie.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday April 20 2022, @01:12PM (2 children)
I know it's wrong to be glad of harm coming to people but I'm so very bitter about this stuff these days. There's a slim chance a few more people might take notice of the problem, and, y'know, maybe even stop constantly buying, and throwing out, mountains of plastic crapola all the time, if it actually starts to do them real noticeable harm.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @06:40PM (1 child)
you have to stop it further up the chain. you can't expect poor people to change the system from the ground up. the companies have to be held accountable for all the plastic that ends up in the environment. If they are forced to pay for every bit of cleanup, they will be much pickier about when to use plastic. nations of the world should band together and clean all the plastic up right fucking now and make the companies pay for it. don't allow them to sell to your market if they won't.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Wednesday April 20 2022, @09:08PM
I think for meaningful change, the changes of approach and attitude need to happen at all levels. Governments and big corporations need to swallow a lot of the overheads, certainly, but consumers need to change their attitude and habits fundamentally too so that there's no longer such high demand for ultra-cheap, ultra-disposable, environmentally harmful products. The demand needs to go away otherwise you get black markets skipping the regulations and undercutting the eco-friendly products.
At least, theoretically, these microplastics will start to affect everyone, CEOs and poor alike. Although maybe the billionaires will start farming their food in hermetically sealed biodomes to avoid this. :(
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.